


Monster is a Mommy (but mostly Mommy is a Monster)

by NRGmeta (NRGburst)



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Essays, Gen, Meta, Nonfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-02-22 20:35:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23166706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NRGburst/pseuds/NRGmeta
Summary: Originally posted on DW after TVD S5 for Trope Bingo; archiving for March Meta Matters 2020.
Relationships: Nadia Petrova & Katherine Pierce
Kudos: 3
Collections: March Meta Matters Challenge





	Monster is a Mommy (but mostly Mommy is a Monster)

I loved the way TVD explored this trope in season five, because of the way it both subverted and played it straight with one of my faves: Katherine Pierce. There is both redemption and utter selfishness in her interactions with Nadia Petrova, who we eventually discover is her long-lost daughter. Katherine’s number one has always been herself, but we discover she’s capable of maternal feelings when she makes some dastardly –and also unexpectedly compassionate-- choices in order to protect her daughter.

We’ve known since season 2 that Katherine had a baby girl out of wedlock, and that she’d been forced to give her up. But despite the spot on casting, fans were surprised by the revelation that the Nadia was that daughter, one who obviously cares strongly about her birth mother to the staggering extent of getting turned and trailing her for 500 years.

_(From 5x05)_

_Nadia: “You killed my mother. It was in a little cottage in England. It was April 6 th, 1492. She was all alone. Exiled by her family two years earlier. You stuck her head in a noose, pushed her off a chair and snapped her neck.”_

_Katherine: “Who are you?”_

_Nadia: “My name is Nadia Petrova. And you are my mother.”_

We’re also given a surprising revelation about Katherine: she’d gone back to Bulgaria after escaping Klaus to search (fruitlessly) for her daughter when Nadia was 8. She’d cared enough about that baby girl to try to find her, something completely at odds with the consummately self-centered, ruthless, manipulative creature others (and even herself) think she is.

But their touching reunion is abruptly shattered when Damon tricks Katherine into coming over so that he can force feed her blood (and therefore the Cure for vampirism) to Silas, which has the effect of forcing her to age rapidly. Horrified by her death sentence, (and all attempts to either stop her aging or revert to vampirism) she pushes Nadia away to protect her (Break His Heart to Save Him).

_(From 5x07)_

_Nadia: “We had a moment. There was a bond; I felt it. And then…nothing! You abandoned me all over again!”_

_Katherine: “Okay. First of all, I never abandoned you. You were snatched out of my arms at birth because my father thought I was a knocked-up shameful slut. And second of all: it’s been 500 years. Do we really have to do this whole mother-daughter bonding thing? Estrangement is so much easier.”_

_(Caroline interrupts saying she needs Katherine to go with her.)_

_Nadia: “We’re not done!”_

_Katherine: “Oh yes we are.”_

_Katherine: “I don’t know what kind of twisted fantasy you have about us, but that’s all it is. A fantasy. I would rather rip my own heart out than do more mother/daughter bonding with you. I don’t want to know you. … I’m doing you a favor, Nadia. I can’t be there for you. So take a good look. Because you are never going to see me again.”_

After driving Nadia away, (by perma-killing her boyfriend on top of the nasty words) Katherine attempts to suicide instead of “drifting away” into death as her body falls apart. But when Stefan intervenes (and they sleep together), she finds new reason to try to live again. Stefan shares her suicide note with Nadia who comes up with a better plan: put Katherine in another person's body as a Traveler, thereby escaping the rapid aging. But Katherine hedges on answering (and we find out why when we learn whose body Nadia had volunteered.)

All of this emotional back and forth takes an obvious toll on Nadia: she knows that she cares far more for Katherine than her mother cares for her. And yet she can’t help it: Katherine has been her primary motivation for so long that she can’t seem to give up on her no matter how toxic and hurtful she is, even volunteering her own body for Katherine to use so that she can live on.

(From 5x10)

_Nadia: “I spent five hundred years looking for her. Only to lose her all over again. I don’t know if I should hate her for giving up. Or be at her side when she dies.”_

_Matt: “Listen. I get the whole crappy parenting thing. My mom was selfish, and drank too much, and never really thought about how it would affect me.”_

_Nadia: “Then you know what it’s like to hold on to the hope that maybe, just once, she’ll do what YOU want.”_

However, when Katherine is in organ failure and dying, she convinces Nadia not to become her Traveler host. Finally, survival is not her bottom line, Nadia is.

(From 5x11)

_Katherine: “Nadia. Letting my father rip you from my arms: it was the biggest regret of my life. I should have fought harder to keep you but I didn’t. So I spent the next 500 years making sure I never made that mistake again. I fought for everything. And in the process, I lived a full life. And I got to know my beautiful daughter. But you spent the last centuries searching for me. Don’t waste another minute on me. It’s your turn to live.”_

_Nadia: “I can’t do this.”_

_Katherine: “I’ve made selfish decisions all my life. Let me do the right thing for once.”_

It’s all a ruse though since there’s a better alternative to Nadia’s body: Elena’s. So they hijack her body just when everybody thinks that Katherine has died. And since Katherine wants it all, she uses Nadia’s loyalty to keep her informed about Elena’s life (via Matt). It all seems very much more Mommy is a monster than the other way around- again, Nadia continues to do things she dislikes, very much her mother’s lackey instead of her priority.

And yet when Nadia ends up with a Hybrid bite (for which there is no cure), Katherine doesn’t choose the road and her own survival. She chooses to first make a deal with Wes in a desperate bid for a solution, then to turn herself over so that she can be with Nadia in her final moments, giving her a final, blissful dream of them having a life together before she passes. Katherine is then killed by Stefan.

(From 5x15)

_Katherine: “This is not what your life should have been. 500 years of searching for a mother who ended up… being me. Let me show you what your life should have been…”_

_“And I said, ‘Good night, Nadia. Sleep well. Your mother loves you.’”_

Giving one’s life for another is usually one of the most redeeming things any character can do, and in stark contrast with her “better you die than I” modus operandi; really, the ultimate Monster is a Mommy act. And yet the powers-that-be decide that she is still irredeemable, despite the usual way this trope goes. She is actually given the worst fate of all: she’s sucked into an extra-dimensional hell in the afterlife, forever separated from Nadia, who is the last supernatural sent to The Other Side.   
  
While I think it's great characterization that she always remained more Monster than Mommy, I still find it hard to understand how everything Katherine did is always treated as objectively worse than the things our mass murdering protagonists do?

**Author's Note:**

> Original post [on my DW here.](https://nrgburst.dreamwidth.org/1960.html)


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